The relatively quiet 66th Police Precinct covering Borough Park and Kensington is seeing a dramatic increase in reported rapes and felony assaults, according to the latest official police statistics.
So far this year, there have been 14 reported rapes as opposed to five at this time last year, including four reported rapes in the last 28 days. There were eight reported rapes in total for all of last year.
A police source said the rapes do not show any pattern of being a serial rapist on the loose, but are incidents of “date rape” where the victim knew the perpetrator.
Meanwhile, all the other violent felony crimes are up with the exception of robbery, which is down slightly with 74 reported incidents so far this year as compared to 78 at this time last year.
But felony assault is up 10 percent with 74 reported incidents so far in 2015 as compared to 69 at this time last year. Murder is up with three so far this year as compared to one at this time last year, and there have been two shootings and three shooting victims for the year while there were none at this time last year.
Community Board 12 District Manager Barry Spitzer downplayed the spike in violent crime, pointing out that while overall crime is about even from last year, it is down eight percent from 2013.
“Also worth noting is that even though they are statistically tied with 2014, arrests are up by 17 percent for the seven major index crimes,” said Spitzer.
But Borough Park State Senator Simcha Felder said it’s no shock that the numbers have gone up.
“This is the inevitable outcome of what happens when police are being demoralized and stop and frisk is abolished. Ask any person on the street – the average person will tell you that they feel less safe now than they did two years ago,” Felder said.
